Ep. 287: Hot

Bookbinding

Nado. Nothing. Zip. Why? A perfectly good reason why.

My bookbinding studio doesn’t have air conditioning and like most of the planet, Kanazawa is hot. Hotter than some other places but cooler than a few (like Texas, which is on fire). 

Rather than sit and sweat a bucket load in the first five or six minutes – which would dampen the paper and make it ew ugly with sweat stains — I’ve turned to reading and writing more. In an air conditioned room in my house or the local library.

Fiction

First, I’ve been editing one-fifth of my Calvado Pentalogy, Calvado, in hopes of making it available on Apple Books soon. Within this year. Just in time for Christmas shopping! I hope. I’m also going to edit the other four-fifths to make the entire pentalogy available for your reading pleasure within this, maybe, decade.

In Calvado, Calvado, the female protagonist, has a lucrative job as a fashion model but is also a second-year medical student.

Mack is a delinquent and singer who believes he is followed by Death. All who care for him seem to die. Therefore, he avoids any attachment to anyone. But he meets Calvado. 

The Calvado Pentalogy follows Calvado as she moves through time and space. She’s in Venice (twice) in the present (in The Venetian Slime Woman) and in the 1400s (in The Idiot Runs). She’s in Istanbul both in the present and the past (in The Priests of Hiroshima).  And she’s in Gutenberg Iowa in the present when a typesetter falls in love with her even though she’s several decades younger than him (in Tristram’s Printer).

Second, I’ve been writing and rewriting Heart of September in hopes of finishing it soon. Like this year. Although the end is fast approaching. Not the novel, the year. The end of the year is fast approaching. I’ve juggled, added, deleted, and severely edited chapters to make the whole thing fit together much better. 

I’ve added atmosphere and details, caused more of the Congo to appear, and raised the importance of certain characters (the snake lady, for example). 

Plus I’ve renamed it again back to Heart of September as there are so many references to Heart of Darkness I had to make sure you all understood I know there are references to Heart of Darkness.

I’ve also been writing the final few chapters of a novel I finished some time ago but needs to be improved called Molly Bright. This novel is about a woman who is kidnapped. Three unlikely people decided to save her. The unlikely people are:

• a buyer for a major housewares company; her name is Molly Bright.
• a Ivy League drop out who has spent the last year begging for food in India
• a dancer.

Also involved are a university couple whose daughter was kidnapped, a former hitman for the Mafia who moved to Japan to run a cheap ramen shop, and, of course, the two (formerly six, but four were killed) kidnappers.